You Are Such A Loser | By Steven W. Alloway

I want to try something a little different in today’s Spark. Before you read it, watch this video. It’s just under three minutes long. It does have a couple of instances of strong language, though, so maybe use discretion if you’re around young children. I promise you, though, it’s worth your time.

If you’re not in a position to open the video right now, I’ll give you a brief overview: it’s a song by the comedy duo Garfunkel and Oates—an uncharacteristically uplifting song about an unexpected topic. It’s called “Such a Loser,” and it’s all about how trying and failing is something to be celebrated. You tried something new, you put yourself out there, and it didn’t work out. It may even have gone spectacularly wrong. But you still went for it, and that in and of itself is a triumph. You’re a loser. Good for you. You deserve a cheering section, too.

I still remember the first time I heard this song. It resonated with me so much that I immediately decided to include it in my theater group’s annual Christmas show—even though, as you’ll note, it has nothing to do with Christmas. But I found a way to make it fit. After I and another character each suffered devastating setbacks in our individual creative journeys, I sang it as an unlikely bit of encouragement for both of us.

I’m not sure the audience quite understood the point the song was making, When I sang the repeated refrain, “You are such a loser,” they acted like I was just insulting the other character, over and over. There were several exclamations of, “Aw, poor Marc!” rather than the introspection and emotional resonance I was going for. So yeah, I tried something a bit different, and it didn’t go as planned. Fortunately for me, I know a great song to keep in mind when things like that happen.

Part of me wishes I could just leave the article at that, because Garfunkel and Oates make the point so much better than I could. But I do, in fact, have quite a bit of space left to fill. So let’s take a closer look at failure, and why it’s such an important part of success.

Climbing Uphill

The theme this month is persistence, and failure is an important part of that. Without failure, we wouldn’t need to be persistent. Or at the very least, we wouldn’t need to be reminded to be persistent.

“Keep at it! Don’t stop! Stay on the path!”

“Well, duh. Why wouldn’t I? Everything is going great!”

It’s the failures that frustrate us. It’s the failures that embarrass us, make us second-guess ourselves, make us want to throw in the towel. But they’re also why we need to keep going. If you fail, it may mean you’ve done something wrong, but it also means you’re doing something right. And if you don’t fail, it means you’re not doing anything at all.

We often think of our creative journey as linear. We travel up the hill to success. Sometimes we fail. But we learn from it, so that next time, we don’t fail. We navigate around the obstacles, we push on the steep incline, until eventually we reach the top, and that’s the end of our journey. Success! Not failure!

Or at least, we hope it will be like that. We may talk about our creative journeys that way, but we know deep down that it’s more complicated than that. We climb up the hill. Sometimes we stumble and get back up, but sometimes we just fall all the way down, right to the bottom. Even after we get to the top… Sometimes we fall again anyway, and have to climb it again. 

You try, you fail, you learn… And then, oftentimes, you fail the next time, too. And the next, and the next. Eventually, if you keep at it, you do reach the top of the hill, and your success. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still fall back down. Fortunately, the next time up, you have the benefit of experience, which hopefully makes the journey easier. That doesn’t make it any less frustrating, though.

It’s not even always necessarily about learning, either. Sometimes, no matter how good you are at what you’re doing, no matter how many times you’ve done it successfully in the past, no matter how prepared you are for what could go wrong, circumstances beyond your control send your plans spiraling towards disaster. By all accounts, this should have been a success. But instead, somehow, it was a failure. You’re a loser. Good for you.

It’s a Mystery

I myself am no stranger to circumstances beyond my control, sending my plans spiraling towards disaster. After all, I do theater. What it’s like to do theater has never been more perfectly summed up than in the movie, Shakespeare in Love.

“Allow me to explain about the theater. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles, on the road to imminent disaster.”

“So what do we do?”

“Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. It’s a mystery.”

The phrase, “It’s a mystery,” is repeated several times throughout the rest of the film, whenever the play seems to be going spectacularly wrong—which is frequently. I often use the phrase myself, as a reassurance whenever my own latest theater endeavor is going spectacularly wrong—which is also frequently.

There are a couple of minor changes I’d make to that exchange, though. First, in answer to the question, “What do we do?” the answer is not, “Nothing.” It’s true that help often comes in unexpected forms and from unexpected places. Sometimes, when everything is on the road to imminent disaster, miracles occur, snatching us from the jaws of defeat at the last minute in ways that defy all logic. But it does NOT happen if we just do nothing.

If you sit there and think, “Don’t worry, this will all turn out well,” then it won’t. You work for it. You pound the pavement. You exhaust all of your resources, you find new ones, and you exhaust those too. That’s the only way to get your miracle.

Or, as Julia Cameron put it, “Pray to catch the bus. Then run as fast as you can.”

As It Turns Out…

The other bit I’d change in the Shakespeare in Love quote is, “Strangely enough, it all turns out well.” This is not entirely true. We are, after all, talking about the inevitability of failure on a long-term scale. I’ve done many, many shows in my time. Some of them were great. Some of them were spectacular, even in the face of insurmountable obstacles and imminent disaster.

I’ve also had bad shows before, plenty of times. I’ve had disasters where we were able to roll with the punches and turn them into something great, but I’ve also had things go wrong that I just couldn’t recover from. I’ve had audiences not resonate with what we’re doing, or just not care enough to pay attention. And I’ve had performances with no audiences at all. No, I’m afraid, try as you might, it does not always turn out well.

But it always turns out. That’s the important thing. It might not go well, but it still goes. But you still do it. Then afterwards, you take a beat to recover, and you pick yourself up and try again. Hopefully, it will go better next time. But even if it doesn’t, the fact that you still did it is a badge of honor. Other people would have given up. Other people would have said, “Nah, this isn’t worth it.” But not you. You’re not a quitter. You’re a loser. Good for you.

Not everyone has the courage to lose. It’s easy to laugh at someone who screws up. It’s a lot harder to be the person putting themselves in a position where they can screw up and be laughed at.

There’s a particular line in the “Such a Loser” song that really resonates with me: “You can only fall that far, ‘cause you set yourself up so high.” A spectacular failure is only possible when you make a spectacular attempt. And that attempt is something to be proud of. It’s much better to be the person who falls spectacularly than the person who never climbed up to begin with. They might laugh at you, but what did they ever do that was worth talking about?

The Eternal Glory of Failure

Hopefully, when you fail, you learn from it. Hopefully, you get what you need out of the experience so that you can succeed the next time. Hopefully, this loss is just the prelude to a whole series of wins. But even if not… At the very least, you’ll get a good story out of it. In fact, it may well be a much better story than if you’d won.

“Hey! Do you want to hear the story of how I won that contest?”

Umm… I don’t know. Maybe.

“Hey! Do you want to hear the story of how I almost won that contest?”

Sure, yeah. Let’s hear it.

“Hey! Do you want to hear the story of how I spectacularly lost that contest?”

Absolutely, yes! Any other conversation is irrelevant until I have heard that story from beginning to end.

Most of my best stories are about spectacular failures or ridiculous disasters. They may have been awful to experience in the moment, but in the aftermath, they’re so much fun to tell. One bad experience can provide entertainment for years to come. 

And remember, when you’re telling the story, you’re the hero, even if you don’t come out a winner. Those setbacks may have been embarrassing for you in the moment, but when you’re the one telling them, instead of making us laugh at you, they just make us root for you harder. Or at the very least, laugh with you.

Because in the end, they’ve been there too. We can resonate with the story because we’ve all been losers, at times. But the fact that you’re here now means you got through it. You lost, but you kept going, and now you’re able to bare your scars proudly, even laugh about it. That is a story worth telling and worth hearing. You are such a loser. Good for you.